Google vs Australia: Big Tech strikes again?

Remember how Twitter and virtually every other big tech social media company banned the previous president of America? Ah, the good times. If that wasn't a reminder about who holds the cards in this information war, then maybe this new one between Google, and Australia will do the trick.

So the word is that both Google and Facebook are putting up a grandstand against the Australian government due to an issue surrounding sharing news on their platforms. It has gotten so bad that Google, you know, the "business" has threatened Australia that it will pull out its services from the country if they don't leave the status quo.

The bone of contention is, well, you guessed it right, money. Here's the thing though, Australia just discovered what almost everyone on Hive has been saying since forever about taking a piece of the pie. The legislature is sitting over a decision that will require Google, Facebook and other big tech social media companies to remunerate news agencies that post links on their platform.

Both companies are feigning obliviousness by claiming that it is "free press" and that they make "no profit" from links that are posted on their platform. Australian government think that's utter BS and stated that in reality, the true value of their platforms is from the engagement that these news agencies provide.

I'm sitting in my tiny office and thinking to myself "well, someone finally gets it". I have nothing against big tech but you guys have grown into billion-dollar entities through our information, it is only fair you give back to some of us.

Of course, they're not going to give up easily. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Google and Facebook would rather see hell get frozen over than relinquish their money to these news agencies. Instead of accepting to pay the money, Google has threatened to leave Australia, thus depriving the millions of people that depend on the search engine.

I mean, can you imagine the precedence that would set if Australia actually won the case? I reckon others will start asking questions and others will start trying to get their own piece of the pie.

Without even knowing it, the Australian government is trying to decentralised the internet by making moves that will spread that juicy internet money to everyone in their country at least.

In the event that Google leaves Australia, the only real loser in the debacle will be the business(Google), seeing as they'll lose customers. The Australian people, on the other hand, will move on and start using other search engines.

Speaking of search engines, ever since I heard about Presearch, I haven't actually been using google as often. The crypto enabled search engine pays me PRE tokens for every time I make a search with it. The value is derived from the company buying them back. You can signup with my referral link here.

Google vs Australia: Big Tech strikes again?

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